Experience the National Audubon Society’s biggest event of the year. The glamorous Gala Dinner features an exquisite seated dinner, awards ceremony, and thrilling live auction. This year's gala takes place on Tuesday, March 31, 2015 at 6:30 p.m. at The Plaza Hotel in New York City.

Celebrate our 2015 award winners, Jack and Laura Dangermond, who will receive the prestigious Audubon Medal, and Spencer Beebe, who will receive the Lufkin Prize for Environmental Leadership. Proceeds from this exciting event support the National Audubon Society’s mission to conserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and the earth's biological diversity.

About the Audubon Medal

One of the highest honors in conservation, the Audubon Medal recognizes outstanding achievement in the field of conservation and environmental protection. First awarded in 1947, recipients have since included Walt Disney, Rachel Carson, Ted Turner, Edward O. Wilson, former President Jimmy Carter, and the Rockefeller family.

This Year’s Audubon Medal Awardees: Jack and Laura Dangermond

Film by Particle Productions

Jack and Laura Dangermond launched Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri) in 1969 with a vision of how maps and geographic sciences could promote deeper understanding of our world and enable us to design a better future. Today, that’s exactly what Esri’s innovative mapping technology is doing. The best-kept secret in conservation, Esri is enabling organizations around the globe to take on the most daunting threats to the planet. The Dangermonds have donated more than a billion dollars in geo-spatial, analytical and visualization technology to research institutions, schools and nonprofit organizations, equipping conservationists and public schools with the same GIS tools that drive the strategies of Fortune 500 companies. In 2013, the U.N named Jack Dangermond a Champion of the Earth. He has also been recognized by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, the Economist, and the National Governor’s Association and has received 13 honorary doctorates from universities around the world.

About the Lufkin Prize

The Dan W. Lufkin Prize for Environmental Leadership recognizes individuals who have dedicated their entire lives to the environment and on-the-ground conservation. Recipients receive $100,000 to help further their conservation work. The prize is named in honor of Dan W. Lufkin, a businessman who also served as Connecticut's first Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection. Mr. Lufkin’s lifelong passion for the environment has guided his generous support of numerous nonprofit organizations, including the National Audubon Society.

Spencer Biddle Beebe’s lifelong commitment to conservation is reflected in an extraordinary legacy of achievements from the Amazon to Alaska. He is renowned for designing innovative solutions that see economics and ecology as part of a whole life support system, from debt-for-nature swaps in the Bolivian Amazon to environmental banking in the Pacific Northwest. In 1991, Beebe founded Portland-based Ecotrust, which is focused on delivering social, economic, and environmental benefit to communities in the coastal temperate rain forest bioregion of North America, "the rainforests of home."

In keeping with the idea that “the economy of nature and the ecology of man are inseparable,” Ecotrust’s achievements honor the relationship between people and place. Prior to founding Ecotrust, Beebe led The Nature Conservancy International and was founding President of Conservation International. Currently, Beebe serves as Executive Chair of Ecotrust, Chair of Ecotrust Forest Management, and leads Ecotrust’s natural capital investment initiatives in forests, food & farms, green building and social finance.

He and his wife Janie of 44 years have three grown children: Silas, Sam and Lydia.